ProtonMail and SimpleLogin emails will be blocked from registering on websites

mark@programming.dev to Technology@lemmy.world – 551 points –
You are going to be blocked. Please take action immediately! · Issue #362 · ProtonMail/WebClients
github.com

This makes me 😭

UPDATE: Thanks @nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de for this update: The issue has now been commented on and was closed by the maintainer, where they explained why those blocks would be nonsense. But it appears the OP wants to still talk with maintainer privately about it.

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Sick of sites requiring an account, email or phone number. Makes the web even more unfriendly. I hope temporary emails can always get around filters, as if you play stupid games you should win stupid prices.

I was in a club and had to open an account to open a tab, they asked me for my government number ID, pretty standard, but then they started asking for phone number, age, email, Instagram account and I was like wtf, I just want a bottle of water!

Where do you live that providing your government id to a business is standard? In Germany, the only one outside of a judge to be allowed to request that is law enforcement ( even then only with proper cause ). Of course, some businesses are legally required to request and process your ID number ( e.g. when booking international flights, medical insurance companies etc), but these are under tight federal control and supervision to ensure data safety.

Age verification sometimes is a thing for purchasing 18+ things ( media or drugs like alcohol & smokes), but even then businesses will only ever perform a visual check of the date of birth on your ID. Technically they can never demand to hold your ID, not even for a short time just to better read the date. You only have to show them your ID. And actually recording and/or storing any of that information would be insanely illegal.

Germany / Europe might have its issues, but we at least try and take our freedom and data privacy serious. I would never dream of handing my ID to a generic business like a club for anything more than the age check.

It's in Brazil and is pretty standard. There's different IDs here, the most common one is called CPF and is used for financial transactions, is the number that identify you with the tax agency. In some things you can denied it, like in the pharmacy, but in other ones not, like buying a TV or car.

Interesting, will have to read up on how that works in Brazil. We also have a separate tax id here ( which is also used for pension and social security ), but that one is even more secure/private than the passport ID. We only provide that to our chosen medical insurance provider ( bc they need to register it with the ministry of finance ) as well as employers ( because 50% of the insurance has to be paid by employers).

It's explicitly not allowed and intended for generic identification purposes, because it makes it too accessible for identity theft and associated scams.

they asked me my government number ID, pretty standard

How very dystopian.

If you're ordering alcohol, completely ordinary

Or maybe that's what you were saying and I missed the sarcasm, idk

Is it ordinary for them to request the ID number? I'm Canada they just do a quick glance at the birth date on your ID

Just keep using the temp emails and when they don't recieve your email , call them up. Their IT support will unblock it after 50-100 calls. Remember consumers have the power.

I tried to report an issue in GitLab. I needed to input my phone number and payment information to create an account. WTF? No thanks, I'll just not report the issue.

do you guys not have phones

When buying stuff online I find 0101etc works. Public numbers used to work fine for other things but not so much these days. If that doesn't work I usually don't give a damn about the service at that point (e.g. ShatGPT) #TeamBots

I used to have a disposable phone number just for signing up but it was more trouble then it was worth. If the website is shady enough, I go look somewhere else.

Sick of sites requiring an account, email or phone number.

Blame bots. The other day we had a post about how 70% of account creation processes on sites are started by bots. Imagine that if you didn’t even need confirmation.

What if account creation was local (e.g. Git and keys)?

If no data needs to be stored then no account is needed. Use the system where there is a unique indentifier based on the password.

Use the system where there is a unique indentifier based on the password.

Never heard of this, how does that work?

A tripcode "is the hashed result of a password that allows one's identity to be recognized without storing any data about users. Entering a particular password will let one "sign" one's posts with the tripcode generated from that password. Trying to take another user's tripcode and compute their password from it (for instance, to make posts that appear to come from a particular person) is somewhat computationally difficult."

That's pretty cool, but still, does that really solve the bot problem? Doesn't it make it easier for them to spam?

Tripcodes doesn't affect bots spamming at all.

No longer needing accounts removes whatever barrier to entry email, phone or credit card is worth. On the plus side less people are being farmed for data, so society is better off 😕

What I mean is, doesn’t that barrier being removed make things easier for bots as well? And while humans only save a bit of time once to register, bot farms would improve a lot considering they do it over and over again.

Less data farming is undeniably better, but imo if something helps bringing us further from the Dead Internet outcome I can accept it. Of course, just the bare necessities, sites that require you mail + phone + name and so on when they don’t need them to function should really dial it down.

Perhaps requiring government ID would prevent even more bots.. but stopping bots is not my priority. When reading YouTube comments I see obvious comments from bots making generic comments or asking people to click links, but I also see many comments that make me wonder if they are being sincere or this is ML generated. Unless you're going to ask for more and more personal data then only the side creating bots will advance in fooling those requirement. Barriers to entry do not appear to be a valid long-term strategy.

Yeah, requiring government IDs would basically solve the bot problem, but would make the internet a privacy hell, especially for nations like China which already struggle with it.

We need a middle ground, but it’s becoming increasingly harder to find one as you said.